..at tail's end of life...sipping it slowly..feeling the grass under my feet...rain dripping down cheeks..

Saturday, 23 February 2013

..my first mother in law..

..a man with more than a single wife, will also have more in-laws...thankfully, for pakmat, balancing among in-laws is not a arduous as with wives...no matter what they say about in-laws, I found mine none of the abnoxious and overbearing things as they were made out to be....no...all of mine were supportive and non-partisan...as a woman will never forgets her first, whatever that is, pakmat remembers his first mother-in-law rather fondly...

..she died on a Thursday, 5th of July, 2012, some minutes after ten in the morning..she was my mother in law that everyone called Mok...she was 86, and mother to my first wife whom my children, taught not to mince words, called, in my presence, 'my ex'...as Tom, my son-in-law, would say it, nanny to her 7 grandchildren..

..she was the wife of a policeman...and was widowed some years back before her death when her husband died on the 26th of July, 1998..my ex was her only child...but sometimes in her teens, her late father took on a second wife, who duly had a pair of male twins...I know my ex revolted, from the stories that I heard, but Mok took one of the twins and treated him as her very own...he was showered with love and care..

..my first daughter, Tisa..tok's pet..

..Tok with my third daughter, Ida..

...ex with her cucus reciting the Yasin over Tok's grave..

..may she always be blessed..

..with Ebok..

..Mok was loved my all..this son-in-law included..she was always gentle and hardly had a harsh word for anyone..not even for her madu...least of all, her husband, whom, on the main, remained in Johor with his second wife, whom we called Moksu, while she was with her daughter in Kota Bharu....until her daughter met me in 1967...she resisted me in the beginning...which gave truth to the adage 'mother to begin, daughter to win..' but she relented and we were married on the 1st of April, 1973...